We're continuing our stroll in Elkhart today, and we're heading over here to some beautiful art.

The Midwest Museum of American Art.

And I've been here before, and you guys have some new stuff going on, and especially the view from outside.

Thanks for joining me today.

Thanks.

We're happy to have you here.

This is kind of a look our a peek inside.

Tell us about this new, display that you guys have going on.

Well, we decided that visibility was an important issue coming into this new year.

And a lot of people, have suggested to us that they weren't really sure where the museum was, what it was all about.

And so we're trying to present some new signage in the way of vignette of works of art on display in the museum's collection, some of which are nationally recognized.

I love it.

So these are what you're seeing out here.

You can find it indoors, too.

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

All right, well, let's go ahead and doors and see what you guys have going on.

Okay.

Well, and we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that right now we have three exhibits going on.

Yeah, through, June 8th Politics and religion.

Okay, let's go take a look.

Well, you're entering the Sanctum Sanctorum, the main gallery, referred to as the Burns Gallery here.

And you see immediately the one that's outside, right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay, there it is.

I love it.

And this piece happens to be by, a legacy artist, one of the senior members of our art tribe, Abner Hershberger, who's 92 years old, still alive, still alive and working and living in Goshen.

And we are the, permanent collection for his legacy.

So we own over 70 works.

This is just one of them.

Does he still do any kind of museum talks with you guys as he has in the past?

Okay, but you can still have museum talk show every week.

Yes.

Without fail.

Every Thursday they're called noon talks and they were from 1215 to 115 every Thursday.

Do you have that on your website.

So you can see we do have it on the website.

We have a newsletter.

So yes, we have many ways to get it out to people.

All right.

Let's keep okay.

Okay.

Well as we move into these north galleries of course permanent collection maintains there.

And here we start, the first of three exhibits here, the overarching, exhibit theme here is politics and religion.

Okay.

This happens to be the work of Seattle based photographer Nate Gowdy, and he was an eyewitness to the events that unfolded on January the 6th, 2021.

And he produced a book about it, which he will be here on.

He will have been here and have talked about, but these will remain on view.

These are large scale versions of over 100 images and shot hundreds of images in the book.

There's about 100.

This is ten of a special sweet representing that January 6th historic event.

And in June of that talk about how that just kind of being displayed here in the museum gives you time to reflect and come in.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And we reflect as we hang the art because, you know, you're very up close and personal with it.

And the other thing about Nate Gowdy is he has produced two books, on the January 6th photography that he took, and they're both be on, for sale here at the museum.

And one is a large edition that is really beautiful.

So it's well worth coming in and taking a look at.

So many reasons to come in.

You notice here, too, that there is a single panel written by Nate Gowdy and these are uninterrupted by a gallery label.

I noticed that.

So yeah, because I'm a gallery label reader so that this way, to read this and then to reflect on these as historic moments, as artifacts, presented in the way they are, they are certainly at the level of fine art photography.

Yeah.

But the experience is about thinking and reading this and thinking about it and then forming your own conclusion in this safe environment.

You know, the museum is a safe environment where many ideas come to the foreground, in particular those artists that speak out and reflect certain current events.

Let's head over to the next space.

Let's go back here.

Okay.

Oh, this is interesting.

Oh I love this one.

That one catches my eye.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

We have several unique pieces a counter, event of this trilogy of exhibits and book ending.

Nate Gowdy, these photographs are these early etchings by Gabor Peterdi was about 19 years old when he was studying in Paris in the 1930s.

So these range in date from 1936.

So just after World War Two, in 1946, and because Peterdi was born in Budapest, Hungary, and came to America after trying to escape Europe.

While he was there, he was thinking about all of these things that were happening politically, geopolitically, and certainly the threat of gathering war clouds.

So he used in essence, symbolism, like Hungary, Wolf, stallions rearing stallions, like the German army was very full of that kind of pomp and parade circumstance.

And if certainly the idea of the Holocaust starts to play itself out in later work.

So this was his way of announcing, trying to deal with.

And then afterwards.

And during the war, he was a specialist assigned to hunt Nazi war criminals because he could speak five languages as well.

But he came back to America.

And the really American story there for Peterdi is that he became one of the two most important tap routes of printmaking.

The art of printmaking in America, teaching subsequent generations that went out and became professors and artists.

So he taught for 23 years at Yale University.

So again, these are the earliest works in our collection.

And like that of Abner Hershberger, we're a really large repository thanks to that one doc, Stephen Konate.

We now own over 139 works by Peterdi.

And that to me signals the largest public collection.

That's amazing outside of Yale University.

Absolutely.

So we this is this is, you know, part of the politics and religion.

Yeah.

This is called, Echoes of War.

And he will be speaking at a noontime talk.

Okay.

Great.

So we can get information about that too.

Now, you guys have other stuff happening in the gallery's space, too.

I mean, recently you guys just started yoga.

Oh, yeah, we're doing yoga in the studio.

We started on April 18th.

It's very exciting.

Jenny Nolan, who's with Pura Vida, she is doing this every Friday through the end of June.

How cool is that added cost for that?

Actually, it is $7 for members, so it's discounted for members and it's $10 for nonmembers.

Wonderful.

So yeah.

And it's been really lovely.

It's, like 915 to 1015 in the mornings, on Fridays.

Everybody felt it was like a very zen space.

Yeah.

So yeah.

So I think we'll, we'll see more people and we see in, museology that, fitness and healthy minds, healthy bodies react positively to works of art.

So it's not just us, but a lot of the museums have adopted this idea.

And so we look at it as, fitness, art, community and experience.

So giving it a new face, that's an acronym for.

Yeah.

So now, Jennifer, we are in the next gallery here because this continues.

There's a lot of space here.

There's a lot of art to share with you.

Tell us a little bit about this particular.

Well, this is a New York artist Sue Cue.

And she makes, does a lot of pieces that are political.

There's undertones.

And in this one, this is abolition.

So this fits perfectly with politics and religion and maybe not with current politics, but certainly in, our very, vibrant U.S history.

Sure.

So, so yeah, so that's why she's represented here.

And we have several other pieces in this exhibit by Sue Cue we have an animal farm piece down here.

Okay.

And again, if you've read Animal Farm, it has political overtones.

And then this one's kind of interesting I think this is another Sue Cue piece.

And this is old.

It's back when Clarence Thomas was being confirmed for the Supreme Court.

And it may be too old for some people to remember, but this is when Anita Hill made allegations against Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment.

And, this is the embodiment of how, at least they felt in.

So co-found a New York artists about how she was treated basically being burned at the stake.

And it's interesting because most of these, senators are dead now, but you have, Arlen Specter, you have Ted Kennedy, you have Joe Biden.

Yeah.

Strong.

Thurman Hatch.

And basically, she was ostracized because she came forward and made allegations of sexual harassment not so different from the way you fast forward.

Now, this was in 91.

When you look at 2025, we're still struggling with the same issues.

Yeah.

So there's so much relevance here too for people to come in and reflect.

Absolutely.

And I know you guys have some other events that are coming up here too in the museum.

We do, we do.

We have the 46th anniversary.

And that is a big deal for you guys.

All right?

I mean, four more years, 50 years.

It's hard to believe.

Time flies.

Right?

Yeah.

And but one of our big donors who, Brian has mentioned earlier is Doctor Stephen Conant.

He is being honored, and he has donated over 1500 pieces of art to the museum since 1993.

Celia Weez will be our musical performance.

So it should be a great time.

And it is free to our members.

And it's.

Yes, and it's $10 for nonmembers.

How wonderful.

Now, things even have some unique ways to get out and explore art too.

That's right.

We like to take people from the Michiana community elsewhere to other museums.

So we've planned to one of our usual bus trips of the year to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Frida Kahlo and Mary Reynolds exhibition will be the first time that Frida Kahlo's work will be shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, and people can sign up, anytime between now until we reach capacity, which we're only taking 50.

And it can be members or nonmembers, and you can call us at the museum to sign up for that and even pay over the phone if you like.

The exhibit will our the bus trip rather will be on Monday, June 16th, and we'll depart the museum at 930 in the morning.

So we got some time to buy those tickets, but they're going to sell out, so make sure you go get them.

They always do.

Okay.

So people where can they get your hours.

Well we can go to our website or Facebook or Instagram, but our website is certainly the spot.

Midwest museum dot org.

And you can see all of this information unfolded in various pages in our time as, we're open to the public Wednesday through Friday from 11 to 5.

Okay.

And on Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 5.

I love it.

And we just did a little sampling, but there is so much more to hear.

You guys have to come check out what's going on here at the Midwest Museum.

Thank you so much.

Oh, thanks for coming.